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Rwanda: Development Towards Authoritarianism?

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Rwanda: Development Towards Authoritarianism? Trinity College Trinity College Digital Repository Senior Theses and Projects Student Scholarship Spring 2017 Rwanda: Development towards Authoritarianism? Chinmay Rayarikar Trinity College, Hartford Connecticut, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/theses Part of the African Studies Commons, and the Urban Studies and Planning Commons Recommended Citation Rayarikar, Chinmay, "Rwanda: Development towards Authoritarianism?". Senior Theses, Trinity College, Hartford, CT 2017. Trinity College Digital Repository, https://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/theses/636 Rwanda: Development towards Authoritarianism? By Chinmay Rayarikar Submitted to the International Studies Program, Trinity College Supervised by Dr Garth Myers and Dr Seth Markle ©2017 Rayarikar Abstract Since the culmination of the Genocide of 1994, Rwanda has become one of the fastest growing economies in the world, while also showing great improvements on human development indicators. This has made Rwanda a brilliant example of post-conflict reconstruction. At the same time, the nation-state has been led by a single party government that works under a framework of a nominal multi-party democracy. While a large part of Rwanda’s post-conflict development has been made possible by the government in power, this paper argues that Rwanda is developing towards a completely authoritarian state structure. Development is concentrated in very few regions of the country, votes are occasionally rigged, large amount of power is concentrated in a few hands, and there is a constant war that is partly sponsored by Rwanda. All of these factors have a central figure above them: President Paul Kagame. While the West continues to praise Rwanda for the remarkable strides it has made on human development indicators and in liberalising its economy, it fails to ignore the many serious issues that plague the nation-state. Rwanda’s story of development cannot be sustained if structural changes are not implemented in Rwanda in the near future. i Rayarikar Preface and Acknowledgements I first started taking a serious interest in Rwanda while I was studying as an exchange student at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. This interest was spurred by an article on something called developmental authoritarianism in Ethiopia and Rwanda, published in the journal African Studies. The author, Hilary Matfess, wrote about the high rates of growth that these states achieved in recent years, while having an authoritarian state structure. Both these states intrigued me a lot, and I decided to visit them last year, partly encouraged by cheap flight tickets. Since then, I have closely followed Rwanda and the incredible changes that have taken place there, and this paper is simply a detailed and well-researched write-up on what I observed in Rwanda, and the many inconsistencies in its seemingly amazing developmental story. I do not want this paper to add to the vast amount of literature that criticises governments in Africa. I simply wish to show the much more sinister side that Rwanda’s developmental story successfully hides. Like many things in my life, this paper would only have been possible due to a lot of help and advice I received from people at Trinity College and outside. Dr Garth Myers has been my academic advisor since my first year at Trinity. Not only did he inspire me to study about development in East Africa, he also provided many insights on development policy. Dr Seth Markle provided me helpful advice on how to address such a complex issue and suggested many readings for going about this topic. Dr Vijay Prashad’s thoughtful critique of writing style and structure in parts of this paper shaped the way I write, probably for the rest of my life. Dr Xiangming Chen’s insights into urbanisation in the global South was critical in shaping the section on urban development. Others from the Trinity College community include my fellow classmates and alumni, in no particular order: Tracy Keza, JP Palmer, Serena Seaman, Sanjay Thapa, Camryn Clark, Paroma Soni, George Denkey, and Kyaw San Min. Many others, in various institutions, provided me with hours of conversations and debates that shaped the thoughts that went into writing this paper. These people include, but are not limited to: Yash Kothari at Boston University, Parikshit Sharma at Bowdoin College, Elias Tuomaala at ii Rayarikar Harvard University, Krish Aurora at SOAS, Guillaume Picard in Buenos Aires, and Aneesa Khan at College of the Atlantic. Lastly, and certainly not the least, my parents in Mumbai showed great interest in what I was writing about, and their support and encouragement was critical in completing this project. iii Rayarikar Table of Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................................. i Preface and Acknowledgements .................................................................................................... ii Table of Contents .......................................................................................................................... iv Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 1 The Rise of Paul Kagame and Rwanda ....................................................................................... 10 The State is Kagame ...................................................................................................................... 16 The War in Eastern Congo .......................................................................................................... 24 The War on Journalism ................................................................................................................ 28 The Urban Spectacle ..................................................................................................................... 35 The Corporate Republic of Rwanda ........................................................................................... 49 Conclusion: Rwanda in the Future .............................................................................................. 54 Bibliography .................................................................................................................................... 57 iv Rayarikar Introduction “A cockroach cannot bring forth a butterfly.” 1 This was the first line of an editorial published in Kangura, an important monthly newspaper published in Rwanda between 1990 and 1994. This newspaper had ties to Hutu extremists and the National Republican Movement for Democracy and Development (NRMD), which was the ruling party at that time in Rwanda. It effectively served as an anti-Tutsi propaganda piece for the NRMD, but its editors were independent and frequently critical of the NRMD for being too moderate in dealing with the supposed problem of the Tutsis. Kangura served to play an important role in creating anti-Tutsi sentiments across Rwanda in the years that immediately preceded the Rwandan Genocide. The editorial from which the opening sentence is quoted from is one such example. The “cockroach” was meant to be the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), headed by the current President of Rwanda, Paul Kagame. The RPF was an armed group at that time, and was fighting to end the violence against Tutsis in Rwanda. The comparison to a cockroach couldn’t have been further away from the truth. The RPF’s efforts to rebuild a nation destroyed by genocide are now considered to be an overwhelming success. This group of so-called “cockroaches” were able to lead Rwanda into prosperity and turn the devastated nation around into becoming a post-conflict economic miracle. No other nation in Sub-Saharan Africa, other than exceptions like Mauritius and Botswana, has seen the same kind of improvement in socioeconomic conditions in such a short period of time.2 Unlike Botswana and Mauritius, where economies completely changed after decolonisation, Rwanda’s economic structure has essentially remained the same, and its primary export is still coffee, as it was two decades ago. 1 ‘A Cockroach Cannot Bring Forth a Butterfly’, Kangura, February 1993, 40th edition, http://www.rwandafile.com/Kangura/k40r.html. 2 Abdi Ismail Samatar, An African Miracle: State and Class Leadership and Colonial Legacy in Botswana Development (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1999). 1 Rayarikar Rebuilding a devastated nation-state after a tragedy of this scale is extremely hard, if not entirely impossible. Contrary to expectations based on other states in Sub-Saharan Africa, the new government that took over power after the genocide managed to completely turn around from this situation of destruction, and loss of human life and capital. After bringing the Rwandan Genocide to a Figure 1: The Rwandan economy has been growing at an extremely high rate since the 1994 Rwandan Genocide. quick end, the RPF, with Paul (World Bank Data, 2016) Kagame’s leadership, gained control of power in Kigali. They undertook a massive effort to rebuild infrastructure, kick start the economy, improve socioeconomic conditions, and redevelop social cohesion within the troubled nation. This period of rapid development continues to this day with the same intensity. Rwanda has seen great improvements on indicators, and has sustained a GDP growth rate averaging around 8% per year.3 Figure I shows this dramatic increase
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